News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Changing natural electrical signaling in non-neural cells improves innate immune response to bacterial infections and injury. Tadpoles that received therapeutics, including those used in humans for other purposes, which depolarized their cells had higher survival rates when infected with E. coli than controls. The research has applications for treatment of emerging diseases and traumatic injury in humans.

A research team from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has performed the first-ever direct nanoscale examination of a living cell membrane. In doing so, it also resolved a long-standing debate by identifying tiny groupings of lipid molecules that are likely key to the cell's functioning.

Researchers have succeeded in permanently rewriting flatworms' regenerative body shape by resetting their internal bioelectric pattern memory, causing even normal-appearing flatworms to harbor the 'code' to regenerate as two-headed worms.

A team of scientists have traced the evolution of whale size through more than 30 million years of history and found that very large whales appeared along several branches of the family tree about 2 to 3 million years ago. Increasing ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere during this period likely altered the way whales' food was distributed in the oceans and enhanced the benefits of a large body size, the scientists say.

By some estimates, more than 1 million people contract infections from medical devices in US hospitals each year, many of which are due to biofilms. A new study suggests a possible new way to prevent such biofilms from forming, which would sharply reduce incidents of related hospital-borne infection.

Biophysicists have proposed a universal mechanism for the 'sense of smell' in bacteria. This was done by obtaining the structure of the NarQ protein from Escherichia coli (E. coli). The paper published in Science will help us understand how bacteria 'communicate' with one another and form biofilms on sterile surfaces or inside the human body. Drugs which affect bacteria's 'sense of smell' could potentially be used as substitutes for modern antibiotics.